Can you deny to other matter, argues the geologist, a similar tenacity of self-preservation, the vitality of impress which merely records the uniformity of the laws and constitution of nature, and which intimates that, through all past time, there were showers to cheer and to refresh the products of the earth? Truth becomes more marvelous than fiction when traced in researches such as these—showing the illimitable range over time and space permitted to human inquiry—and producing, at the same time, things both of heaven and of earth scarcely to be dreamt of in human philosophy. V. But the economic and practically useful, no less than the speculative or fanciful, form constituents of the new red sandstone formation. The strata are not only indented with impressions of strange and doubtful origin; they inclose, like those of the carboniferous system, treasures of the greatest value; and nature, in ceasing to abound in one kind of product, has been no less exuberant in others, equally contributive to the comfort and convenience of man. In this class of rocks are situated our great deposits of ROCK-SALT and gypsum, of the former of which, beside supplying the demands of the home market, the mines of Cheshire alone export from Liverpool upward of half a million of tons weight. The distribution of the saline mineral is very general over the earth, and by no means constant in its geognostic position; as, for example, in Galicia, it is found among the tertiary deposits; in New York, it occupies the middle of the silurians; while in Hungary, Poland, and England, it is uniformly associated with the new red sandstone. Rock-salt has been long known to and prized by mankind; it became an object of taxation or tribute six hundred and forty years before the Christian era, as narrated of Ancus Martins, “salinarum vectigal instituit;” and hence centuries afterward, when Great Britain was in possession of the Romans, the legions received salt as part of their pay or “salary.” Our richest mines are in Cheshire, and along the districts watered by the Dee, the Weaver, and the Mersey. The beds, or rather masses, are imperfectly stratified, and vary in thickness from a few inches to 120 feet and upward: gypsum and variegated marls may be regarded as _constants_ in the formation, the gypseous deposits sometimes attaining the enormous depth of 150 feet.